Abstract : The objective of this work has been the characterization of chemical markers that are useful for identification of B. anthracis using pyrolysis-based methods. The strategy is to select groups of organisms that differ in particular chemotaxonomic features, identify any pyrolysis products that differentiates groups from one another, hypothesize the origin of these chemical markers in the cell, and correlate information from pyrolysis of appropriate model compounds as well as information from independent analytical methods.